(from TVGuide.com)




An all-star cast of many colors remakes a classic. Will it charm a whole new generation?

B Y   M A R G Y   R O C H L I N

Clear the way, please, clear the way!" someone shouts as Whitney Houston emerges from a well-polished carriage shaped like a pumpkin and begins to travel across soundstage 26 on the Sony Pictures lot. Houston's coppery Fairy Godmother wig and thick theatrical makeup make her look a little bit like a refugee from "Cats." Still, with her eyes fixed mid-distance and that famous visage tilted toward the sky, she comports herself like a queen, trailed by a wedge-shaped entourage of publicists, helpers, friends, and a woman holding poufy armloads of a shiny train that would otherwise drag on the dirty concrete floor.

Outside the soundstage, a throng of studio laborers parts for this convoy -- get too close, and a gray-suited security guard demands identification. When Houston finally arrives at her trailer, she settles into a wicker chair that has been placed out front. A full five minutes have elapsed, and she has walked about 15 feet. Now this is glamour!

And so it should be. For the next five days, Houston will warble, fly (through the miracle of blue-screen special effects), and grant wishes in ABC's Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, costarring Brandy Norwood in the title role. Although it won't be the first televised staging of the classic (Julie Andrews headlined in 1957, and Lesley Ann Warren's version was broadcast in 1965), it definitely carries the largest sticker price.

Everywhere you look on this back lot today are the visible results of the reported $12 million budget, from the extras who hang out near the craft-services truck in breeches and frock coats dreamed up by famed costume designer Ellen Mirojnick ("Face/Off," "Basic Instinct") to the cartoonishly vivid sets meant to recall the Technicolor richness of Dorothy's first glimpse of Munchkinland (this soundstage is, in fact, where parts of "The Wizard of Oz" were shot).

And while it has been said that all the principals took a pay cut, it's impossible to think of a talent package that includes Houston, Norwood, Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen, Bernadette Peters as the Stepmother, and Jason Alexander as the freshly created character of the Prince's valet, Lionel, and not imagine that we're still talking about a fairly sizable piece of change.

The biggest obstacle this Cinderella faces, however, is not financial: The rags-to-riches story has already been told quite well and quite wonderfully. Houston hopes her version will be considered unique for its assemblage of a cast straight out of a Benetton ad, where the skin pigment of each actor is different and the sight is clearly meant to sell the message of social harmony.

Says Houston, who believes that Cinderella's plight is universal enough to speak to children of all colors: "It's the story of a young girl who is trying to get out of a bad situation and move up to a higher level. Know what I'm saying?"

Among those surely tuning in to see Houston's rainbow vision will be CBS executives. For four years, the network waited patiently for Houston's updated telling of this TV classic. Last fall, when she still hadn't found a free moment in her frenzied schedule, they gave Team Cinderella its walking papers. A new home was found in a single call to Charles Hirschhorn, president of Walt Disney Television (Disney also owns ABC). "We didn't even pause," says Hirschhorn, who knew not only that the 1957 broadcast had attracted 107 million viewers -- a record at the time -- but that his company could also mass-market this Cinderella as a home video. "We just said, 'Yeah.'"

And they had the perfect slot for it: ABC's newly revived Wonderful World of Disney. Not only had today's parents grown up with the legendary Sunday-night program, but many had watched the Lesley Ann Warren Cinderella more than once.

"It seemed to us that these parents would be interested in offering their children a piece of their childhood," says Hirschhorn, who confesses that the only debate Cinderella inspired within the corporate ranks was whether it should be Wonderful World of Disney's premiere offering or show up six Sundays down the line for the fall sweeps period, as ultimately decided.